Over the past few years, medical procedures have advanced to stages where less and less invasive or minimally invasive surgeries, diagnostic procedures, exploratory procedures, or other medical procedures have been desired and demanded both by patients, physicians, and various medical industry administrators. To accomplish these desires and demands, various medical devices and instrumentation has been developed such as cannulas or micro-cannulas, various catheter devices including steerable catheters, micro-surgical instrumentation and implants, medical introducers, fiber optic scopes and other imaging devices, and other endoscopic related devices.
In situations where minimally invasive procedures are being used, space within an opening, a cavity, a passageway, or a vessel of a patient's body becomes more and more constrained. Conventionally, a medical introducer is often used during a surgical or other medical procedure. An example of a hemostatic sheath introducer having a single lumen formed therein can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,755,702 by Hillstead et al. titled "Adjustable Angular Sheath Introducer" which allows a main body lumen thereof to be at a different angle than a rotating section lumen. Even with the use of a single lumen medical introducer such as shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,755,702, operating within tight or small spaces with a plurality of medical devices, such as instruments, scopes, fluids, catheters, implants, and the like, becomes difficult to manage by physicians and medical assistants. This is especially true where a single physician wants to perform a procedure in his office to reduce or prevent the need(s) for hospitalization.
Additionally, when performing a procedure with a plurality of medical devices, positioning, controlling, manipulating, and handling the various medical devices during the procedure can prevent physicians from performing as well as capable. In other words, the construction and design of the medical device becomes a system constraint, e.g., reduces or inhibits system flexibility, for the physician. For example, such constraints can require physicians to perform an exploratory procedure, a diagnostic procedure, and/or an actual surgical operation as two, three, or more different patient visits. To respond to some of these problems, various catheters and endoscopic devices have been developed which attempt to perform an "all-in-one" type function or which attempt to combine steering and other functions. Some examples of such attempts can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,083,549 by Cho et al. titled "Endoscope With Tapered Shaft," U.S. Pat. No. 5,484,407 by Osypka titled "Catheter With Steerable Distal End," U.S. Pat. No. 5,772,628 by Bacich et al. titled "Surgical Access Device And Method Of Construction Same," U.S. Pat. No. 5,488,960 by Toner titled "Coronary Sinus Catheter Introducer System," U.S. Pat. No. 5,377,668 by Ehmsen et al. '668 titled Apparatus And Method For Endoscopic Diagnostics And Therapy," U.S. Pat. No. 5,443,454 by Tanabe et al. titled Catheter For Embolectomy," U.S. Pat. No. 5,342,299 by Snoke et al. titled "Steerable Catheter," and U.S. Pat. No. 5,354,266 by Snoke titled "Method Of Epidural Surgery."
One of the basic problems with these prior attempts, however, has been that by bundling too many features into a single medical device makes the device complex to manufacture and handle, expensive, and relatively large within a confined space. Also, when performing a procedure, the physician is often still limited by the devices capabilities, and if the physician attempts a procedure using additional devices, similar problems related to space and degrees of freedom arise again. In other words, the physical and structural constraints of the device can severely limit the physicians abilities to view, move around within the space, transition between procedures, and perform additional procedural function.